In 2010 I completed a big year in the lower 48 states, setting a record for that geographical area of 704 species seen for the year. During 2010 I did a blog called Slow Birding: the big year meets the big night. All of those blog entries are still available below, but now that the big year is finished, I will be continuing the blog calling it just Slow Birding. I will from time to time post entries about my and other's birding.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Feeling a Bit Sheepish But Elated

When I found out yesterday that I had a double entry for scissor-tailed flycatcher, I was very concerned that there might be other entry errors. So I first checked the list on the blog and found 3 more dupes--american redstart, semipalmated plover, and california gull. Then I decided to review all my weekly checklists. I have been using the ABA trip list--a blue covered booklet that has space for 10 days of birding. I have started a new one each week so I have only used 7 of the slots. My weeks start on Friday because 2010 began on a Friday.

I also have a master list derived from the weekly trip lists. I went thru it 4 times to check for errors and found none there. But what I did find from my paper master list is that in fact I have seen 704 species this year--not the 701 that I thought was my total as of yesterday. Once I discovered that I knew I had made other entry errors on the blog. The main problem was a result of not adding the monthly chronology of birds seen until the beginning of February when I listed well over 200 birds. I found that I had not entered 4 birds from that 4+ week period--northern harrier, blue-headed vireo, forster's tern and hermit thrush.

Of these 4, only forster's tern had been logged later in February. Also, I found a dupe of california gull in February, but I had not entered summer tanager so it made up for the CA gull dupe. I found 2 entries for american redstart, but the second entry should have been northern waterthrush. Similarly, the second entry for scissor-tailed flycatcher should have been golden-cheeked warbler, and a 2nd entry for semipalmated plover should have been semipalmated sandpiper.

I have now corrected the chronology on the right side of my blog page. I also have gone back into the blog, and corrected/modified the YTD info to match what actually happened as far as the birds seen. I want to thank the 2 readers who have pointed out the errors since it caused me to thoroughly review my check lists to be able to correct the errors. There are still some days left to bird. Stay tuned!

4 comments:

You caught the double California Gull? Do you have your list in a spreadsheet? What I did to check your list was to copy and paste the list from your blog into a spreadsheet, delete the numbers, then sort alphabetically. That's how I found the dupes.